In 1251, Tulei's son Möngke ascended the throne of the Great Khan of the Mongols and launched a third western expedition against Western and Central Asia, while attacking the Southern Song Dynasty in a major manner.

In order to avoid the Yangtze River moat, a roundabout encirclement tactic was adopted. Kublai Khan led an army of 100,000 to attack and destroy the Dali Kingdom and capture Duan Xingzhi, the last monarch of the Dali Kingdom.

At this time, the Southern Song Dynasty had fallen into a great military siege of the Mongols. Unfortunately, the famous anti-Mongolian generals Meng Hui and Du Gao of the Southern Song Dynasty died of illness one after another.

Thus, the Second Mongol-Song War began.

The Mongol army was divided into three routes:

The Middle Route Army, led by the Mongol Khan Meng Ge himself, went south to Sichuan and went straight to Chongqing.

The Southern Route Army set out from Yunnan, passed through Guangxi, and went straight to Changsha.

The Northern Route Army was led by Kublai Khan and went straight to Ezhou, and the Third Route Army planned to meet in Ezhou, and then march east along the river to take Lin'an, in an attempt to destroy the Southern Song Dynasty in one fell swoop.

The Middle Route Army, led by the Great Khan Meng Ge, conquered Chengdu in one fell swoop, after which the Song army was defeated and retreated, and most of Sichuan was lost. The Mongol army moved south along the Jialing River, but encountered stubborn resistance from the defender Wang Jian in Hezhou.

After that, the two sides launched a fierce offensive and defensive battle in Hezhou, held each other for several months, the Mongolian army has not been able to advance half a step, the anxious Meng Ge personally led his troops to attack the city, was hit by stone artillery, died in the camp that night, the morale of the middle army was low, and had to retreat.

The Northern Route Army led by Kublai Khan also attacked Ezhou for a long time, and Kublai Khan was eager to return to China to snatch the Khan's throne.

In 1260, all the Mongol armies that invaded the Southern Song Dynasty retreated, and the Second Mongol-Song War ended with the death of the Mongol Khan Meng Ge and the return of the Three Route Army in vain.

In 1260, Kublai Khan, who hurried back from the Ezhou front, and his younger brother Ali Buge proclaimed themselves Great Khan in Kaiping and the Mongolian capital Helin respectively, and the two sides launched a four-year civil war, and in 1262, the Han warlord Li Tan, who was in charge of Shandong, rebelled again, and made contact with the Southern Song Dynasty, and the Mongolian situation was very chaotic for a while.

Kublai Khan, who was a genius, quickly put down Li Tan's rebellion, and in 1264, he completely defeated Ali Buge, ending the four-year civil strife in Mongolia, and began to sharpen his sword against the Southern Song Dynasty. As for the Southern Song Dynasty, they did not take advantage of the civil strife in Mongolia to develop themselves, but covered the world with Jia Rudao single-handedly, and the military and government became increasingly corrupt. At this time, an unfortunate thing happened, Liu Quan, the Sichuan garrison of the Southern Song Dynasty, surrendered to Mongolia, and his sailors naturally returned to Mongolia.

In 1268, Mongolia to Ashu as the main general, Liu Cheng as the deputy general, led the Mongolian army and the Southern Song Dynasty naval division to attack Xiangfan, the Mongolian army began to attack the focus of Fancheng, exhausted all kinds of methods, can not break the city, in 1271, Kublai Khan from Sichuan and increased troops, Xiangfan two cities are under increasing pressure, to 1272, Xiangfan has been besieged for five years, the food has been basically exhausted, but the two cities of the army and the people are still high-spirited, the Yuan soldiers have never been able to succeed.

In the same year, Li Tingzhi, the general of the Southern Song Dynasty, sent Zhang Gui and Zhang Shun to lead 3,000 soldiers, carrying urgently needed supplies in the city, successfully broke through the encirclement of the Yuan soldiers, and rushed into Xiangyang, which was the first reinforcement to enter Xiangyang in five years, which greatly boosted the morale of the army and people in the city.

After that, the Xiangyang Song army got in touch with the Song army on the periphery, and the two sides agreed to jointly flank the Yuan army, but some traitors surrendered to the Yuan soldiers and betrayed this plan, resulting in the Xiangyang Song army being ambushed by the Yuan army, suffering heavy losses, and no longer able to counterattack.

In 1273, the Yuan army finally broke through Fancheng, the defender Fan Tianshun, Niu Fu committed suicide and coexisted with the city, Xiangyang has been isolated, the defender Lu Wenhuan surrendered to the Yuan Dynasty, the 6-year Xiangfan defense battle ended with the fall of Xiangfan, and the door of the Southern Song Dynasty was completely opened.

In 1274, Kublai Khan ordered the Yuan soldiers to enter the Yangtze River from the Han River, and went east along the Yangtze River, along the way the Southern Song generals surrendered one after another, and in 1276, the soldiers came to Lin'an City, Empress Dowager Xie and Song Gongzong went out of the city to surrender, and the Southern Song Dynasty was exhausted.

After Gongzong surrendered, the rest of the Southern Song Dynasty had been insisting on resistance in various places, the general Li Tingzhi was still holding Yangzhou, Lu Xiufu and Zhang Shijie supported Duanzong as emperor in Fuzhou, and Wen Tianxiang developed anti-Yuan forces in Jiangxi and once controlled many cities.

Li Tingzhi and Wen Tianxiang were defeated and captured, and they were all killed.

The small court of the Southern Song Dynasty has always insisted on resisting the Yuan on the coast of Guangdong, and in 1279 it launched a final decisive battle with the Yuan army at Gushan Mountain, and was defeated. Lu Xiufu did not want to be captured, and with tears in his eyes, he committed suicide by jumping into the sea with the little emperor on his back, and the remnants of the Song army and officials also jumped into the sea and died one after another. At this point, the Southern Song Dynasty was completely destroyed.

Due to the increasingly cowardly, incompetent, and extravagant ruling clique of the Zhao Dynasty, the increasingly serious corruption of the ruling class and the brutal bureaucratic rule, the traitorous officials in power, the heavy taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the deep class contradictions, the frequent peasant uprisings, and the increasingly acute national contradictions.

The invasion of the sect by Liao, Xia, Jin, and Yuan eventually led to the extinction of the sect.

On March 19 of this year, it was supposed to be a beautiful spring, but the rulers of the exiled Southern Song Dynasty regime did not have the heart to see this beautiful scenery.

On March 19, the Song army and the Mongol army fought a large-scale naval battle at Yashan, which was a rare naval battle in all of ancient China.

Yashan is located in Yamen Town, about 50 kilometers south of Xinhui District, Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province, where the water of Yinzhou Lake flows out to the sea, and it is also the entrance and exit of the tide.

"There is a cliff mountain in the east, there is a soup bottle mountain in the west, and the veins of the two mountains extend to the south into the sea, such as a door to tie the water mouth, just like a half-open door," so it is also called the cliff gate.

The Battle of Yashan was a battle directly related to the survival of the Southern Song Dynasty, and it was a decisive battle between the remnants of the Song army and the Yuan army. In the end of the war, the Yuan army won more with less, and the Song army was completely annihilated.

The Southern Song Dynasty destroyed the country, Lu Xiufu committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea with the young emperor Zhao Yu on his back, and many loyal ministers followed him, and 100,000 soldiers and civilians jumped into the sea and died in the country.

The Battle of Yashan was the fall of the Zhao and Song dynasties, and it also meant the complete destruction of the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the final unification of the whole of China by the Mongol and Yuan dynasties.

After the defeat of Yashan, only 20,000 of the 300,000 Song soldiers were captured, and the rest were all killed in battle, from the emperor to the ordinary soldiers and civilians, all committed suicide and martyrdom. 100,000 scholars in Zhejiang have committed suicide by jumping into the sea, and there are 40,000 in Fujian! The Mongol army slaughtered the city, killing 80% of the Han people in the north, and the elite was wiped out. The Chinese spirit no longer existed after the Song Dynasty.

For the first time, China was conquered by northern nomads in its entirety. The demise of the Southern Song Dynasty marked the end of the classical era of China, and some people believe that this naval battle marked the decline and fall of Chinese civilization in the classical sense, and there is a saying that "there is no China after Yashan".

The Battle of Yashan caused a fault in the Chinese civilization, which has been inherited for thousands of years, and its impact was far-reaching.

The Ming and Qing dynasties were very different from their predecessors, and the fall of the Song dynasty put an end to China's attempt to transform from an agrarian empire to a commercial society.

It was precisely because the Song Dynasty tried to abandon the form of a centralized agricultural empire that it continued to be militarily weak. In the East Asian monsoon region of the Cold Weapon Age, a centralized agricultural empire may be the best choice for the continuation of civilization.

At this moment, a strange wind suddenly blew, making Mei Xiaohan suddenly feel a little cold, so she couldn't help but feel tightened.

"It's a cold wind!"

It's past the beginning of spring, but it's still so cold...

The beginning of spring in the lunar calendar, is the first solar term, the division of the beginning of spring, is after astronomical research, only to divide, named the beginning of the spring is:

Standing is the beginning, spring is spring, everything grows, spring flowers bloom, so it is named Lichun.